


A Kingdom

by justinlovesart



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-03
Updated: 2011-03-03
Packaged: 2017-10-16 01:58:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justinlovesart/pseuds/justinlovesart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ficlet set between S1 and S2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kingdom

**Author's Note:**

> Very angsty.

Brian heard Debbie when she came home.

He didn’t catch the whole conversation between her and Vic, but he could imagine it. Words like “Jeep” and “Brian” and “Michael’s room” travelled up the stairs through semi-closed doors.

 _She’s coming up now_ , he told himself, and right on cue he heard her stomp tiredly up the worn steps: a familiar sound, but not as comforting as it had been in the past.

Perhaps he should have moved, gotten out of the room to meet her on more neutral ground, but he stood there, turning the King of Babylon’s crown in his hands as he had been doing for the last 30 minutes.

She opened the door cautiously, gently even, and that surprised him. She stopped at the threshold and waited. He didn’t turn towards her because it seemed too much effort right now.

“I saw your car at the front,” she said. “It’s dirty.”

He glanced at her sideways, without lifting his head. She was still wearing her work clothes.

“Your top is immaculate.”

She looked down and frowned in surprise, as if noticing for the first time that there were no cock-themed quips scribbled over her chest and wondering where they might have gone.

She walked inside the room and, more tentatively, towards him, but Brian was grateful when she stopped a few feet away and didn’t try to touch him. He kept staring at the crown, feeling the pointed tips with his index finger, one at a time.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” she said. “With Michael in Portland and Justin at the hospital it’s been too fucking quiet here.”

Brian tried not to flinch, but he looked instantly away, towards the window.

Without seeing her, he knew that Debbie was looking around the room and back at him, moving from right to left and left to right in small, uncertain steps. She stroked the corner of the bed cover, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle. Then she picked up a pencil from the desk, stared at it intently and put it back precisely where she’d found it, next to the sketch album.

“Brian...”

Brian wanted to go away but his feet were glued to the floor, his eyes fixed on the clean curtains, the outdated patterns on the wallpaper, the small place where some of the comic books Michael had left behind had been neatly stacked up. _There_ , he thought, breathing again, and walked to that corner.

Letting the crown slide down his arm like an oversized bracelet, he chose the issue at the top of the pile and stared at the tightly-clad superhero on the cover. “Mikey must be missing this,” he said.

“He hasn’t mentioned anything about comic books,” Debbie replied, and Brian could hear a hint of frustration and anger creeping through her voice. More than anything, though, she sounded exhausted. “He mostly asks about you, Brian, when he calls. And about Justin.”

Brian dropped the comic as if on fire and turned around. He was facing Debbie now, though not really seeing her.

“I’ve got to go. I’m late.”

He made for the door, but she wouldn’t budge. “Late for what?” she asked.

He looked at her, at last, let her look at him, and saw her features soften instantly.

“Why don’t you stay for dinner?” She finally dared to touch his face. “It’s puttanesca tonight, and I keep making way too much food.”

Brian almost smiled and for a few moments let himself consider sitting at a familiar table, in a house that still smelled of tomato and garlic, as it had always done.

But Debbie whispered again, “Brian...”

He looked down at the crown in his hands and shrugged. “I’m busy,” he replied. “So many men to fuck, so little time.”

Debbie ran her hand down his cheek, one last time.

“You can keep that, if you like,” she said, looking at what Brian had been holding since she’d arrived. Then she turned around and left.

Later, at the baths, he persuaded a gym trainer to wear the crown, but his head looked freakishly small. “No one will ever ask you to fuck him with this on,” he told him, before turning him against the wall.

The twink who blew him at Babylon kept dropping it while bobbing up and down. "Not regal enough," Brian declared, as the concoction of chemicals in his body made the painted plastic gleam like gold. "Not one fucking queer in this town is regal enough."

At the hospital, he realized he didn’t have the crown with him anymore. He tried to remember when and where he’d lost it, but couldn’t.

He walked to the glass that separated him from Justin, close enough to breath a halo on it.

“Sorry,” he whispered. Then he wiped off his breath.


End file.
